


How to see in the dark

by sloganeer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloganeer/pseuds/sloganeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hasn't seen Veronica in nearly ten years, not since she and Sheriff Mars came to his mother's funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to see in the dark

"What's all this for?" Stiles asks. It's rare enough that his dad is home when Stiles gets home after school. But to find him freshly showered and dressed in the last pair of jeans without paint on the knee or a hole in the butt is an even rarer sight. Stiles drops his backpack on the kitchen floor and shimmies around the island to peer over Dad's shoulder. "Chili? Score! I'm texting Scott to come over."

"Not tonight, kiddo." Dad shakes more red powder into the pot, but he takes a step back and lets Stiles stir. "We have company coming over."

"Company who? You don't have any friends outside of Mrs. McCall and your deputies." He tries to sneak a taste, but Dad is right there to smack to spoon away from his lips.

"I have friends." 

"Name one that I haven't already."

Dad's voice is muffled, his head stuck in the cupboard beside the stove until he straightens, Mom's old cast iron skillet in his hand. It's sad his own father has to resort to cheap tricks to avoid admitting his sad social life.

"What was that, Pop?" Stiles holds up his hand to cup behind his ear. "I didn't hear you."

"Keith Mars," Dad says, and he grins a triumphant grin. He sets the cast iron on the element next to the tall pot of chili, and when his hands are free, he reaches over to close Stiles's open mouth.

Stiles clears his throat and tries to collect himself. "You invited Sheriff Mars?"

"I invited them both, actually."

That's when Stiles feels the bottom of his stomach drop out. He hasn't seen Veronica in nearly ten years, not since she and Sheriff Mars came to his mother's funeral. Dad and the Sheriff have been friends for years, after meeting at some law enforcement conference when Stiles was little, before Sheriff Mars became a PI. They consulted on cases over the phone, and even met up a few times for beer and a ballgame. But not for a long time. Not since everything went down in Neptune. Not since Stiles's mom died.

But Stiles still remembers Veronica.

He wonders if Veronica remembers him. She was his babysitter when their parents went on double dates. She was his childhood crush and biggest hero--next to his dad.

Veronica was beautiful and smart, which Lydia Martin proved was a thing for Stiles. But Veronica was real. She knew his name, and how to beat him at every racing game, and even though his parents were paying her, Veronica actually wanted to hang out with Stiles. She talked to him like a real person. If a much younger, more annoying real person.

"A little warning, Dad?" Stiles glances down at his untied sneakers, the frayed cuffs of his jeans, and the plaid shirt he had dug out of the laundry hamper to wear that morning. "I can't believe you'd spring Veronica Mars on me like this! Don't you love me at all?"

He ignores his dad's eye-rolling and boots it upstairs for a shower, texting Scott "SOS" as he runs.

His phone rings while Stiles is tangled up in his T-shirt, so he puts Scott on speaker. "'Sup, dude?" 

“Mars has landed. Get over here now.”

There’s a long silence. “What does that mean?”

“Mars, Scott. Veronica Mars.”

“Duuuude.”

“I know, right?”

“I’ll be right there.”

It’s probably the only good thing about a best friend who’s also a werewolf. Scott is climbing in through Stiles’s bedroom window before he can take off his pants.

“Is that chili?” Scott asks, sniffing the air. Stiles hates to think what else Scott is smelling in his room. “Your dad’s making his chili, and you led with Veronica Mars?”

“Focus, Scott.” He does a frantic turn around the bedroom, grabbing every piece of dirty laundry and shoving it in the bathroom hamper. Just in case. Just in case Veronica wants to see the bedroom of a slobby seventeen-year-old. “I’m gonna take a shower. You need to help me pick out what to wear.”

“Why me?” Scott whines.

Stiles throws his hands in the air. “Because of the two of us, you have a girlfriend.”

“Had,” Scott says, flopping back onto Stiles’s unmade bed and sulking at the ceiling. There has been a lot of sulking over Allison lately, and Stiles is a saint.

“An ex is better than none.” Stiles shuts the bathroom door on Scott’s comeback and turns on the water.

He shaves in the shower, takes the time to condition his hair because it's a fruity kind that smells nice, and jerks off, even though he knows Scott can hear him. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, towel wrapped around his waist, Stiles inspects the sorry state of his chest hair. It's coming in, but all in a big clump in the middle. Scott says he should shave it, but that's Allison's thing. Stiles imagines Veronica likes a guy natural. Now that she's escaped 09er hell, she wants a smart guy, a real guy, not one of those preppy, rich-boy, tennis players. 

That's what Stiles tells himself. 

"Did you find a shirt?" he asks, coming out of the bathroom. It looks like Scott pulled the entire contents of his closet off its hangers and threw it all over his room. "Did you find anything else in there? The Ark of the Convenent?"

"Where did you get this?" Scott holds up a mint green polo shirt with white edges on the collar and cuffs. 

Stiles yanks it away. "I bought it," he says. He doesn't say that he bought it after he saw Lydia point out something similar in a magazine to a friend in study hall. 

"Don't wear that," Scott says.

Stiles tosses it back into his empty closet. "Yeah, good tip, Scott. What else?"

They toss the plaid, too, and most of Stiles's favourite superhero t-shirts. He argues hard for the Batman ("Because she is Batman!"), but Scott says no, and Scott knows girls. Veronica was still a girl the last time Stiles saw her. She might be as old as Derek now. 

By the time Stiles has buttoned himself into a pair of black jeans and a light blue Oxford, once he's got an actual thumbs up from Scott, and he's reapplied deodorant a second time, the doorbell rings.

"Go!" he whispers, shoving Scott out the window. 

"Save me some chili," Scott says, just his head poking through. The smile he saves for Stiles is lopsided and lazy. He adds, "Good luck!" like an afterthought, before he jumps off the roof and disappears down the street.

Dad is on the landing when Stiles starts down the stairs. "I was coming up to get you," he says.

"I heard the door," Stiles tells him. He tucked in the shirt, and it's making him feel self-conscious. He keeps checking to see that nothing is hanging out. Then he checks his fly.

"Aren't you dressed up?" his dad says, and he's smirking about it. Stiles tells him to shut up.

Hey, Stiles!" The Sheriff stands up from where he's sitting in Dad's recliner. When he shakes Stiles's hand, he puts the other on Stiles's shoulder. "You're so tall. Veronica," he says, turning back. "Can you believe how big this runt got?"

She looks exactly like Stiles remembers. Her hair is a little shorter, and she looks so grown up in her navy blue dress, but she still looks like Veronica. 

"I thought you'd never hit your growth spurt," she says, and they all laugh.

She still makes Stiles feel like an annoying little kid.

Dinner is fine. Dad's chili is amazing, as always, and he put pepperjack in the cornbread. Stiles eats three bowls and five pieces. Sheriff Mars makes most of the conversation, he and Dad trading case stories back and forth, and Veronica adding her own. She's working at one of the FBI California field offices now. She's definitely as old as Derek, and the ring on her finger proves she's definitely engaged.

"Congratulations," Dad says, and he makes her stand up for a hug. He stares pointed eyes at Stiles until Stiles says the same.

Congratulations. His life sucks.

There's a ballgame on TV, so Dad and Sheriff Mars take more beer into the living room and settle in after dinner. Veronica offers to clear the table, which leaves Stiles with the dishes. 

"You're graduating this year?" she asks after they've let the quiet go on too long. It's easy when their dads are in the other room making all the noise. It's nice that his dad has a friend. 

Stiles nods. He scrapes the chili into one big container and three little ones for lunch tomorrow: his dad, himself, and Scott. He turns the water on full to soak the pot, thinking the sound may stall anymore conversation.

"Well, congratulations. It's quite the feat to survive high school in a town with as much supernatural activity as Beacon Hills."

He stumbles the only step between the sink and the dishwasher, and the handful of cutlery Stiles was carrying clatters to the floor.

"You kids all right in there?"

Both Stiles and Veronica are quick to shout, "Fine, Dad."

Stiles scoops up the knives and forks and spoons and shoves them in the cutlery basket. He doesn't want to look up, but he knows he has to. Veronica is staring down at him over the side of the counter, that sweet smile that Stiles used to fall for every time. That smile cheated him out of dessert, TV time, and Playstation.

"What do you know?" Stiles whispers.

"What do you know?" Veronica counters.

"Oh my God!" He slams his head into the range hood getting up too fast. Stiles bites his yelp into fist to stop the dads from rushing into the kitchen. "Oh my God!" he says again, pointing an accusing finger at Veronica. "You're totally Mulder!"

She rolls her eyes. "I'm not Mulder, Stiles. I'm not crazy."

"We can settle this right now. Porn: yes or no?"

"Stiles! Ew!"

"I'm asking for science." It doesn't matter. She's totally Mulder. Stiles can't wait to tell Scott.

"What have you seen?" Veronica asks. She hoists herself up onto a bar stool. When she crosses her legs, one of her sensible pumps dangles from one foot. Stiles tries not to stare. "Hey, pervert, up here."

He tears himself away and finishes loading the dishwasher. "I haven't seen anything."

"Stiles." She sounds just like her dad. Stiles bets she was top of her interrogation class. Stiles bets she only has to look at the bad guys, cross her arms at them like she used to do to him when it was time for bed. "The FBI knows. My dad knows. Your dad's going to know, too."

"I have to protect him," he says. He grips the counter with both hands because he doesn't want to turn and face Veronica. He feels the prickles in his eyes already, just thinking about it. "If he doesn't know anything, I can protect him."

In the living room, the two Sheriffs cheer a run or maybe something bigger. His dad is happy and safe in that room, away from Stiles and everything he's holding inside.

"Not anymore," Veronica says. "But I can help."

Stiles remembers the first time Sheriff Mars came up to Beacon Hills with his wife and his daughter. He was little then, but he remembers because it was summer, and Veronica was wearing a white dress, and her hair was like gold in the sun. It wasn't just a story Stiles made up. That really happened. 

He looks at her now, sitting across the kitchen island, and she's still Veronica Mars, the first girl he ever loved, the first hero of his childhood dreams. But they've both changed so much. When the sun goes out in your world, you have to teach yourself how to see in the dark.

"Werewolves," Stiles says.

Veronica nods. "That's what I've heard."


End file.
